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Papers, Please's genius is that it tricks you into role-playing.
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There's more to poor Jorji than meets the eye. His pathetic attempts to cross the border claiming he has 'business' in Arstotzka provide welcome - albeit brief - comic relief. "There is so much about Papers, Please that is different - even if it is depressing - that the game refreshes even the most jaded of palettes." Jorji Costava has to be a contender for best video game character of 2013. It reveals itself to be best role-playing game of the year.īioWare eat your heart out, for Lucas Pope has without cinematics or fancy conversation wheels created a world filled with more befuddling moral conundrums than all your big budget Babylon 5 video games mustered over the course of an entire console generation. Just as you get to grips with the deliberately cumbersome user interface, just as the world map, its countries, its cities and its rules and regulations start to snuggle into that corner of your mind where 'things that you probably should remember' like to hunker down, Papers, Please reveals itself to be more than a quirky puzzle-solving game. Then, when you settle into Papers, Please's gameplay, something magical happens. If there is a more deliciously cruel risk/reward system in a game released in 2013, I am yet to find it. In Papers, Please, you are nothing more than a cog in the machine, desperately struggling to survive in a world that at best tolerates your existence. In most games you are the world's most powerful being, clicking your fingers to engulf a thousand insignificant curs in flame. It's a mechanic that puts you, the player, in your place. I guess my mother-in-law will bite the dust tonight then. Will that terrible automated typewriter sound spit out a violation message at you? It does! Damn! How did I miss that his weight on his passport didn't match his weight on my scales? Sorry, that's coming out of your meagre wage. After each stamp press you hold your breath. Rush while hunting for discrepancies and you risk making a mistake. As the rules of border control become more complex you need to process people faster so you earn enough money to prevent your family from starving or freezing to death from the bitter, Arstotzkan winter cold in your soulless apartment block. Rather, I struggle through it, my mind frayed, my wits shooting off towards somewhere near the end of the queue of blocky black shadows that shuffles ever closer to my stamp: approved, denied. Tom B talks to Wes about what makes Papers, Please his pick for Games of 2013. The "dah, dum, der, dum, dah, dum, der, dum" title screen music hammers a nail deep into your brain, and then comes the quiet, harsh reality of your passport inspection job: nothing superfluous, just the digitised croaks of the lucky few who make it to your window, a car driving through the snow nearby, and that never-ending megaphone bark: "NEXT." Papers, Please is wonderfully bleak. Its minimalist pixel-art visuals are a virtual vision of the Soviet Union so fitting you can't imagine the game looking anything other than as grey as it does.
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Pope's border control brain teaser looks as cold as it sounds. Even if Lucas Pope had had one million dollars to develop Papers, Please, even if he'd had an army of engineers, animators and producers at his disposal, even if he'd had all the time in the world, he wouldn't have produced a better Papers, Please than the one he did all by himself.